Backfilling history!

Help New Forest History and Archaeology group to backfill a site they have been excavating. We will be shovelling and wheelbarrowing to cover the site back up after a week of digging.

We will meet at Ivy Wood Car Park and then walk approximately 750 metres to the site. This is a long way out compared to our usual tasks so please organise to car share if possible. Please bring gardening gloves if you have them and make sure you have comfortable clothing and footwear for digging and wheelbarrowing as always!

Background Information:

The excavation is intended to be the final season of a fieldwork project by the New Forest History and Archaeology Group on Roman-period settlement sites within the New Forest. New Copse settlement earthworks form a large and potentially important site which is definitely Romano-British, and probably also Late Iron Age in date. The earthwork enclosure bank excavated in 2017/18 (Trench 1) dated to the later 1st/2nd century AD, according to pottery finds, and developed over the next two centuries. By the 4th century, dumping of material behind the bank indicated debris from Roman buildings, with roof tiles, flue tiles and tesserae. Associated pottery includes typical late 3rd/4th century New Forest indented and bag beakers. A second excavation area (Trenches 2 to 10), dug in 2018/21, revealed more positive evidence of Roman-style buildings, in the form of red tesserae in position, indicating a floor area, with simple walling of wood and cob. The third area, Trench 12, revealed an early Roman round-house, found in 2023, and further evidence of re-working tiles to create tesserae. Nearby, in Trench 13, on the east side of the enclosure, similar workshop evidence was found in 2024, and we will be continuing there in 2025. In addition, we intend to set out a trench in the outer enclosure near the main road, where geophysical survey in 2024/5 has indicated a possible activity area. Overall, it is likely that New Copse was a settlement followed by a simple Roman workshop within the enclosure.